The Burgess BioPower plant in Berlin is gradually coming up to operating at 100 percent of capacity, a spokesman said.

Berlin BioPower plant coming up to speed

By JOHN KOZIOLUnion Leader Correspondent

The Burgess BioPower plant has been and is currently producing electricity, according to a spokesman for the plant's owner, while gradually ramping up to full operational capacity.

"We're running, we're fine-tuning and producing power," Scott Tranchemontagne said."It's like anything," Tranchemontagne continued. "It's a big, huge, complex machine and turning it on requires making adjustments. It's not just flipping a switch and you're making 100 percent power. We are up and producing power and supplying it into the grid, but we are trying to find that perfect tuning that will get us up to 100 percent power and I'm told that for any new power plant that takes time."

According to Cate Street Capital, which is based in Portsmouth, the Burgess BioPower plant is a $275 million, 75-megawatt facility that generates power from biomass wood chips.

Burgess BioPower has a 20-year agreement to sell its power to Public Service of New Hampshire. The plant was part of the Fraser Papers pulp mill, which closed in 2006.

Cate Street Capital said the plant will burn some 750,000 tons of low-grade wood per year, in the process supporting several hundred jobs for foresters, loggers and chippers and injecting "approximately $25 million annually into northern New Hampshire's economy."

The Burgess BioPower plant is expected to create about 400 construction jobs and 40 permanent jobs.

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